I was wondering when you stopped going to church? Did you stop cold turkey, or just go every other week, or what? My husband and I are still trying to work this out. While we no longer believe, we do have some things that need to be tied up. Such as, Pinewood Derby, our son just finished everything for his Eagle, and we need to do his court of honor, and it IS church basketball season here in Ky:)

Cold turkey.

I just sort of faded out of view. When pressed, I simply tell people, I am my Mom's caregiver ( she has Alzheimers ) and leave it at that. However, if the Corvette Club I am associated with has something going on I want to do, which is fairly often, I will find a way to do so. In fact, I volunteered to be our Newsletter Editor and I was accepted. Sort of funny, volunteer to do something instead of being volunteered for something you have no interest in.

Also, a 3 hour drive in my Vette is much much more fun than 3 boring hours at church on Sunday. I wonder why ? LOL

It was scary. I thought I would be cursed. Fall ill. Experience personal disaster of some sort. In fact, I realized I would have done as much for my salvation as if I had never missed an NFL game my entire life and prayed to a gallon of milk twice daily. The joke was on me the whole time!!! Best of luck with your exit. Mine was prob less complicated as I had no children and no pinewood derby to navigate.

And then one Sunday, all the tension of trying to live on both sides of the fence exploded. After sacrament, I dropped my boys off at their classes and I went to my car. I cried, and it pissed me off because my mascara ran...

Admittedly, Prop 8 was a catalyst. It was one thing to just go along for my various personal reasons. It was quite another to align myself with an organization that could drive that evil and preach about it over the pulpit.

So I quit. I went to see the bishop that night, told him I was done, and I haven't been back since. I haven't resigned... yet.

It wasn't until after I quit attending that I broke out into full -on research mode. After learning what I did, I knew there was no way I'd ever go back.

That's pretty much how it went with me. At least the part of quitting and then going into searching mode. I definitely quit cold turkey. My 2 youngest continued to go with their dad until I found out how they were being treated. That was in April and they have never been back.

I can't believe I kept going as long as I did. What was I thinking? (I honestly can't answer that.) I also find it interesting that we both quit BEFORE we knew about all the crap.

This is an interesting question and I'm glad you asked. When I finally determined to leave the church, after five long years of study and soul-searching, I just stopped one Sunday and the following Monday composed a letter of resignation and mailed it to my Bishop.

I had not previously discussed it with my wife of 30 years but when I did it was as if she was relieved. Even though she is still a "member of record" she has not been active since the day I quit! She was as sick of LDS nonsense as me and has no desire to return to activity. I've been resigned and she has been inactive for 11 years this month. Yay!

I wish you well in your adventure.

Eventually, my parents gave up because I was just uncontrollable about it.

Luckily, my wife and I moved to a new city around the time we decided to stop attending church. That was 5 years ago.

Quit going after Christmas service 2009. It didn't feel good there for me anymore.

Then just stopped cold turkey. Taught my Relief Society lesson one Sunday morning, then found the clerk and asked if I could make an appointment to speak to the Bishop. The Bishop had been having him call me for awhile trying to get me to come talk to him to which I declined, so when I asked to speak to him he said he could see me that evening. So I went home and finished up my resignation letter, went over and met with the Bishop and handed it to him.

Did the bishop say anything? What was his final ploy/play to get you to come back?

He asked me if I'd had any physical relationships with men outside marriage. I didn't think it hurt to answer his questions since I was freakin resigning anyway, so I did. So he called a disciplinary council. They met (I didn't show up, just gave them all a copy of a letter stating basically that they couldn't fire me, I'd quit, but whatever they decided, just hurry things up), and they decided I was forgiven and still a member in good standing. I think the Bishop truly thought I was just wracked with guilt so that's why I was resigning so he was going to help me stay in. Obviously didn't work. I told him that now that his kangaroo court was over, I expected my letter to be processed pronto. He cried and said "that's not what I wanted." WTF?

Just stopped after some sputtering attendance. I would always go, but I did not like it and I would skip out early or go out for a meal and come back later. I got tired of all the boring morning meetings and all the never-ending home teaching. The three hour block of meetings were boring of course too.

Now I may lose my family, and why? Because I think church is boring and lame. Sometimes I think about going back, but then I would be right back where I was, in the same psychological situation of hurt, anger, and self-hatred.

Not going to church made me hugely happy, a huge load lifted off me. No more stupid, endless obligations, and no more kowtowing to bullying businessmen standing in for a trained clergy.

I did it when I was single. It started in college. Didn't go to BYU. Only went to church when I wanted to, which was for social reasons. Then after I left school and moved to a completely different part of the country I went to church a few times hoping to make new social connections. I got a job in a city about 50 miles away, moved there and quit going to church completely since I then had social contact at work.

It seems most here stopped cold turkey. I understand why.

If you try to go every other week, or go but without taking callings, you will constantly be love-bombed or otherwise pressurized I guess. That happened to me more or less. So after a few weeks I just stayed away. At first the TBMs kept calling me. Then the jackmormons called me to let me know I was still their friend.

Zeno Lorea, can you please explain the role of the Jack Mormons there? Maybe this is a Utah culture thing and I'm out of the loop. I couldn't tell if you were glad for their friendship or not, or if you saw them as being just as deluded (which if they believe I guess they are) and maybe as hypocritical and kool-aid drinking as the TBMs.

I've never been in Utah except to drive through it once or twice.

In high school I got into a fight with the bishops son. Was invited not to return to church. Was so depressed that Sunday,,went out and drank a 6-pack and went skinny dipping.

Wow. Maybe I should have hoped the bishop had a son so I could get in a fight with him and then go have a good time! (Minus of course the depression you felt at being excluded.)

When the church threw me out the doors and told me not to come back !!

JB

One Saturday morning my children told me why they hated church. They had good reasons!

I had tried to cut back on my three callings, church attendance, and tithing, when I became extremely ill. I arranged for sick leave from work with no problem--but the Mormons were not as understanding. They didn't care that I was sick and in pain--they were just angry to lose their organist. The bishop even threatened me that I would get SICKER if I stopped attending. I told him that God would not do that to me--that God wanted me to get well and raise my children. The bishop told me that if I left, my children would fail in life. I told him that he didn't have the authority to judge me and to tell God to withdraw His blessings. He said that the CHI said he had the authority to be "a judge in zion."

Gradually cutting back on attendance, asking for a leave of absence, or not showing up for your callings, does not get the Mormons off your back! This is a cult we're dealing with!

Cold turkey is the most painless way to quit. After about two years of harassment for our inactivity, the kids and I wrote a letter of resignation. We are still being shunned, now, which hurt our feelings at first, but now we're relieved that we don't have to associate with the hideous Mormons anymore.

BTW, as of today, the bishop's wife had to be hospitalized for mental illness, their daughter and son both got divorced and moved back home, the family business went into bankruptcy, their house was foreclosed, and they all had to move away.

...like he did Job's. Meanwhile you are living the good life now but will surely be punished in the hereafter! Gosh Durn you thriving sinners!

(typed with utter sarcasm)

I still believed when I went inactive. Most have heard my story before--I hate to keep re-posting it, but since you are new.

The bishop called me in and told me that my husband, ex. sec. and cheating with men, was going to be one of the next 2 bishops. I thought, "Like hell he will be." Didn't want the fallout of my marriage to happen in public--so I went inactive waiting for him to be released (had been to mormon authorities before marriage--I wasn't doing that again). Then we were primary teachers for a while--he and I--but we were very hit and miss--I'd teach one week, he'd teach the next. He had 2 back surgeries that year, so I think they assumed we were not coming because of that.

We were so careful about how we left that nobody in the ward (and I live in Utah) knew he had left me for TWO YEARS. He was here a lot anyway--but not living here. Oh, and the bishop lived nextdoor.

I went inactive when my kids were just younger than 8 (but had them baptized) and they are now 25. It was only 6-1/2 years or so ago that I realized that I COMPLETELY did not believe in the church. It gradually died over all those years.

So--we didn't stop quickly. In fact, I kept going back now and then and would sit on the couch in teh foyer (so nobody would see me and call me to a new calling--though I was called into the YWs presidency while I'd been inactive for several years--I turned it down).

I went for years and years as a total nonbeliever. One day sitting in PH I hit the saturation point with the nonsense and lies in the lessons and I vowed I was done. It was like my brain rebelled and said that it was not willing to listen to any more lies at church. I haven't attended a meeting since that day except for to see an in-law leave for a mission.

Although I quit attending meetings I still had a clerk job I felt obligated to finish out. I would go to church after the meetings to do that. When I got released they knew that I was never going back.

Sometimes you have to strategically fade away, but for some they can handle just walking away abruptly. There really is no pain- free way to leave a cult.

After I told my wife on a Saturday, the next day we decided to skip church for the first time since conference. After that we started going every other week. In between, we went to other churches or to the mountains. That lasted for a couple months and then we were gone for good.

One day I was watching tv and another big-family mother came on with her seven grown kids. I fought back tears as they read her off. They complained that she treated them like a group. No one was beaten, no one starved, she just didn't have enough time to meet their emotional needs as individuals. The show ended with a psychologist saying that children suffer emotional starvation when they don't have that kind of individual support.

You and I know that you're up early and you're in bed late just struggling to meet their physical demands, keep the house clean, get the clothes washed, the meals on the table and then there's church obligations...it's the best you can do. And it isn 't enough.

One thing you can do that I wish I did right after I left, was to start asking the children what they would like to do--not as a group, not in a meeting, but one by one. It will start them down the wonderful road of individual development. THey will have to think about how they feel. This is new even to you, learning who you are.

You can tell them there's no rush-- you will take them if they want to go and if not, that's fine too.

It's not how you are thinking of it right now, but I am trying to pass along the benefit of someone far down the road looking back on what I would do differently.

You love each one individually so much inside your heart. They can grow up never feeling that. They can feel like part of a herd. And when they ask you in what way they were special to you, you can't really give a concrete example, you're older and your memory isn't so good, you just know they were, you remember watching them play and feeling great love.

It isn't enough. I wish I'd had more one-on-one dates and less group activities. Fewer group decisions and more honoring of individual choices.


Anagrammy

I had begged the Bishop to release me from my Primary Pres. position for months, he knew I had been questioning things and "the spirit" told him that I needed to keep going as Primary Pres. So here I was teaching children stuff that I wasn't even sure I believed anymore.
At the time we were trying to move, thank god the house sold quickly. I immediatley emailed the counselor over Primary and said we were moving and they had no choice they needed to find a new Pres. We went once to church after I was released and I thought I would go crazy in Sunday School (I had been doing the primary thing for 3-4 years so I forgot how it could be. They were talking about wanting prop 8 to pass and people pickiting at the temples, they were being horrible and judgemental and I just couldn't handle it). I COULD NOT go back after that. About a month later we moved and then of course my mom gave the church our new address so they've stopped by but they soon learned we weren't coming, so once in a while my VT stops by but I've decided to have that stopped since she told my 4 yr. old she "needed" to come to church. GRRRR!
My husband has been so supportive (he would've been inactive if it wasn't for me anyway), at first he still believed but didn't care to go to church. But thanks to sites like this one I've shared the things I've found out and he things it's all bullshitake now too! I feel very lucky.
I have been seriously contemplating doing my resignation as well.

I stopped attending for good when I went away to college so I didn't have a lot of expectations to attend except when I was at home. Even then, it wasn't that bad. I got some pressure from my mother, but other people didn't say anything to me and my mom didn't try to force the issue. I had become less active during my last year of high school, but I still attended for the most part unless I had something else I wanted to do. Once I left home and had a new ward, I just never got involved.

One day in Sunday School, the teacher was expostulating about the wickedness of the Catholic church. To my horror, the words, "I'm not thrilled at having the Mountain Meadow Massacre as part of my ecclesiastical heritage." popped out of my mouth. At that point, all I knew about MMM was an A&E program about it. The teacher and class members claimed not to know what I was talking about, so I said I would research it over the coming week and return and report. Came home, Googled MMM, was directed to this board and never went to the LDS church again.

I was one of those people who bounced back and forth between varying degrees of belief and attendence before I finaly resigned. I was one of the goodie goodies as a kid. You know, one of those assholes that your parents wanted you to hang around because they thought you would be pick up on some of my goodieness.

I stoped believing and attending toward the end of my Jr. year in HS untill just prior to my 22nd B-day. At that point I was kind of in a rut with school and life in general and became convinced the church could help me get on track. Which in a sense it did, but in retrospect I could have done fine without it. I ended up serving a mission and getting married in the house of handshakes. Shortly after the sealing I was divorced because the ex turned out to be crazy and sexualy unfaithfull. So much for personal revelation and the burning bossom. I started at a new job and went to a YSA branch where I met my DW. We got married in a june wedding at a beautifull pondside park. I had been trying to fake it till i could make it with the church for a couple years at this point and DW was more of a legacy/social cultmember. After being married to DW for a while we quit attending church alltogether because it was just a hassle most of the time. Shortly after that we both resigned together, afterall why be a member of a cult you don't believe in?

I am married to a TBM, we have kids. He has taken my disbelief very well. I asked him if he would rather stay married to me and miss out on the eternal happy ever after, or be married to some that could do that with him. He said he would rather be with me, even if it meant missing out on all of that. We really are best friends, and so we are both considerate of eachother's feelings.

My Dh only asks that I attend Sacrament meeting with him, he doesn't want to be alone, in return he doesn't say anything bad about my disbelief, skipping all the other classes, not wearing garments or anything.

I hope someday I can stop attending all together, preferably with him, but we are just taking it as it comes.

You can attend church on your own terms. It's not easy. I was able to skip out for a long time without being noticed, because people assumed I was in primary or yw. But then word got out, and I started to get love bombed, but I was always sweet and nonconfrontational and people started leaving me alone.